


Road to Nowhere

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8178872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: John Crichton's torment in Terra Firma





	

Written for SC91 – The Letterman List hosted by A Damned Scientist:  
“Earth, dad, pizza, sex, cold beer, fast cars, sex, Aeryn, and love.” Plus chocolate and ice-cream.  
  
Set during Terra Firma.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Word Count: approximately 1660  
  
The characters aren’t mine.  Again I am just playing with them for a bit.  
  
This sounded so much better in my head when I thought of it!    
  
Thanks to A Damned Scientist for the challenge and the read-through!   
  
**Road to Nowhere (PG-13)**  
  
The Module, engines off, silently floated in space above Earth.    
  
The gloriousness of the planet’s ocean blues, desert and mountain browns, and forest and valley greens crowned by the cloud formation whites was on full display, like a peacock’s tail fanned out for John’s eyes to feast on.  The planet looked serene, beautiful, even more majestic and perfect than he remembered.    
  
He had dreamt of it for so long, dreamt of it night and day – even though there was no such thing as blissful night and day in space – for the last few, surreal years of his life and now that he was here, finally home, all he could feel was numbness:  A cold, sterile numbness that permeated every fibre of his being even in the presence of such inexpressible beauty.       
  
A warning alarm sounded in the cockpit.  Time to go back.  Time for interviews, for meetings, for lectures. Time to be agreeable and smile and comply with what his compatriots expected of him.  
  
Time to go back to acting like everything was fine, like nothing had changed since he had left, like being back was normal.  Like missing her was not the only ache sharp enough to break through the relentless apathy he felt.   Like everything was going to be A-OK.   
  
When had acting become a way of life?  When had a life become an act?  
_______  
  
“I’m fine, Dad.” John repeated once again, mechanically, going through the motions of what was expected of him.    
  
Jack stared at his son.  He saw roiling clouds flit across the sky-blue of his eyes; those same eyes he remembered from before as being always clear and true.  Saw the forced grimace-like-smile creasing those familiar lips; those same lips that had, in the past, always parted in genuine laughter and guileless beams.  Saw the invisible weight pressing down on his shoulders; those same shoulders that had always been square and strong even through the most trying times of life up to the Farscape project.  
  
Jack looked at the man who looked like his son - but he saw a stranger.      
  
“You know you can talk to me, son.  Please tell me what’s wrong?” He entreated once again, wanting to help, wanting to chase those shadows away from John’s face and share that heavy, invisible weight that he feared might soon crush this man who was his child.  
  
His wife Leslie used to say that love is stronger than anything, that it conquers all.  He loved his son with strength of unfathomable depth but it was still not enough.  And that made Jack feel powerless and lost.   
  
Because how do you reach somebody who doesn’t want to be reached?  
________  
  
John lurked, unnoticed, just outside Jack’s kitchen door.  Olivia and Aeryn were inside.  
  
He was frozen to the spot.   
  
He wanted to leave.   
  
He wanted to stay.    
  
He didn’t know what he wanted.  No, that was a lie.  He knew perfectly well what he wanted but for the moment spying on her would have to suffice.  
  
Olivia was arranging on the kitchen counter an array of Earth foods - all of his favourites - and Aeryn was waiting patiently to savour them.  He could only assume that Aeryn had asked to try them out and that Olivia had happily agreed to organize this little tasting to satisfy the alien’s curiosity.  He could only assume that Aeryn had remembered their many conversations over the last few years centred on how much he missed some of the best of Earth’s delights: pizza, chocolate, ice cream.  She had listened, she had memorized the names and now that she was on Earth she wanted to sample them.  It made sense.  
  
What didn’t make sense was that Olivia was the one about to satisfy Aeryn’s curiosity.  
  
He wanted to be the one to feed them to her.   
  
He wanted to be the one standing next to her when her eyes opened wide in wonder, when she smacked her lips at the explosion of glorious tastes in her mouth and then parted them invitingly, silently asking for one more morsel.    
  
He wanted to be the one to share with her a string of hot cheese from the same slice of pizza, kiss the chocolate stains off her lips and lick the ice-cream spoon clean after she had taken a mouthful of the cold treat.  
  
He knew that he had nobody else to blame but himself for being the one standing outside looking in, consumed with frustration and desire.   
  
He knew that only too well.  But knowing it did not stave off the sharp ache he felt in his chest when - as he had imagined and pictured a thousand times in his head before - Aeryn’s reactions to each of the foods laid out in front of her turned out to be exactly what he had expected them to be:  moans of appreciation uttered with  eyes at first closed in concentration and then open in wonder;  the licking of her wide lips by the pink tip of her own tongue;  the wide,  surprised smiles at the mind-blowing flavours playing wonderful havoc with her taste buds.   
  
Sex.  She was the epitome of sex on leather-clad legs.    
  
John watched her avidly and blood started boiling in his veins before rushing south with a dizzying force and single-mindedness only ever experienced in the presence of this alien that had turned his universe upside down.  
  
Oh damn!  
  
Beads of sweat started forming at his hairline.  His hands twitched wanting to touch, stroke, caress what he had forbidden himself from having for reasons he could no longer clearly remember. His eyes drank her in with a desperation born of an unquenchable thirst.  
  
Olivia’s eyes locked on to him from across the room.  He felt them focused on his face and still it took him a handful of seconds to be able to tear his gaze away from the object of his desire, who was now digging deep into a Ben and Jerry’s carton of Chocolate Fudge Brownie with a relish he had never seen her display before around the bland food of the UTs.  
  
He finally looked at his sister.  Saw her eyebrows move up, raised in challenge.  He had a choice to make: he could walk away knowing that Olivia would stay loyal to him and keep his tormented spying a secret  or he could grow a pair, walk in and join them.    
  
He did neither.   
  
He was too much of a man to slink away but he was far too much of a coward to join in, so he did the best he could manage instead.  He strolled in, feigned nonchalance, nodded in the two women’s direction, opened the fridge and grabbed a cold beer.  He would have needed a barrelful of it to cool his ardours but a bottle would have to do for now.  With shaky hand, he popped the cap, pressed the cold bottle briefly against his heated forehead then he slugged the tart liquid back in one long, Adam’s-apple bobbing gulp and tossed the empty container in the trash can.    
  
He felt Aeryn’s eyes bore a hole in his back, willing him to turn around and talk to her.    
  
He straightened his back and fought the urge to drop to his knees to beg her for forgiveness for ignoring her just now and for the last three quarters of a cycle.  He avoided looking directly at her and headed for the door with a vague wave of one hand in her direction while he surreptitiously patted the pocket of his jeans with the other making sure that a bulb of the faithful lakka was there to come to his aid, soon.  Really soon.  As soon as he was out of sight of what he was sure was the scrutiny of her hurt and angry grey eyes.  
  
What a chicken shit he was!   
  
Cowardice accompanied him out of the kitchen like a limp tail on a chastised puppy.  
________  
  
Beer, self-loathing, drugs and driving were not a good combo.  But who cared?  
  
He got into his rented open-top corvette and pushed the pedal to the metal.    
  
He had always loved speed and fast cars and he pushed this one to the limit, contempt at his actions fuelling his recklessness and frustrated desire making him throw all caution to the wind.   
  
For a brief moment he thought about driving to Caroline’s.    
  
Sex.   
  
He could have worked out at least some of his frustrations with her.  He knew she’d be willing.  And if he squeezed his eyes close – tightly enough – she could have been someone else. But no:  He was too damn fair to do that to her and no matter how tightly closed he might squeeze his eyes, he knew that she would never “feel” like the one he really wanted to hold, the one he wanted lying in his arms, spent with exhaustion and happy after hours of sweaty love-making, the one who haunted his dreams and made him toss and turn in his lonely bed.  
  
So, instead, he drove blindly, he drove without direction or thought and he kept driving until a blinking red light on the dashboard alerted him to dangerously low levels of fuel.  
  
He pulled to the side of the road, engine still running.  He had no idea where he was.  He had no idea how he would get back.  What’s more, he didn’t care.    
  
The radio had been blasting tunes throughout his crazed fast ride to nowhere and now as a perfect soundtrack to his day, it blasted out Nazareth’s “Love Hurts”.    
  
Half way through the song, John threw his head back and laughed and laughed and laughed until his throat got raw and tears fell down his face.  
  
  
THE END   
  
**Nazareth – Love Hurts Lyrics - Refrain**  
Love hurts,   
Love scars,   
Love wounds and marks  
Any heart not tough or strong enough  
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain  
Love is like a cloud, it holds a lot of rain  
Love hurts,   
Ooo-oo love hurts

 


End file.
